The Game Today

[love- the- game]

After watching

 

[FistOH]

Statements like this bother me. Not because it's necessarily false but because it's an overreaction. Kids wobble when they hit, period. Perhaps the referees are just being honest. There's no reason to assume that people who claim they want referees to be alarmed by every wobble are concerned with the individual. They probably broke the speed limit to the game, had a cocktail before driving home on a motorcycle. Their own lives are filled with risk-taking endeavors. Maybe you can sign up to be a playground monitor, and make all the recess games so safe, that all the kids don't learn to play together. Go away and be afraid of nuclear war, but leave the game alone. We all agreed on the rules, risks, and possibility of injury before we started practicing to play the game. We've seen the movies and read the newspaper. We've watched it on TV. Men need to hit hard and get hit hard to be men. That's all you need to know if you're not a man.

Don't overreact. You will ruin the game by making it too easy and safe. The reasonable danger is part of the fun. In varying degrees, young men play football for the same reasons daredevils want to live on the edge. We enjoy the risk. In part that's why we love to smash into people. The stands are filled with fluffy overprotected sloths that don't have the courage of working and sacrificing the time and effort to perform in a highly skilled and courageous team sport.

Men that learn courage learn their limitations as well as becoming more powerful and competent when real-life adversity suddenly is thrust upon them. It's not the coward that is moral, it's a self-aware man capable of physical violence that learns to control his potential to do harm. The game has already taken the steps needed to make it reasonably safer. Be quiet now and let us play.

 

[kaching]

I'm wondering why the referees were singled out in the post. Didn't the coaches see the same thing? Didn't the trainers? Didn't the administrators? Parents? Teammates?

 

[FistOH]

Give them all tutus and binkys. Moms are allowed to be in the huddles to remind players not to hit each other TOO hard.

Evidently, she agreed with my response, and removed the post.

 

[FistOH]

I'm wondering why the referees were singled out in the post. Didn't the coaches see the same thing? Didn't the trainers? Didn't the administrators? Parents? Teammates?

Yes, and the point is, that coaches pay attention and know what is reasonable and intervene when needed. They spend more time with other peoples kids, than their own children and have their safety as number one on every list and use appropriate judgment with a very high level of accuracy!

 

[Treadmill]

I don't want the refs making medical decisions. If a player is cleared by the medical staff, they're cleared.